How Power is Restored After a Storm

When a major storm hits, like Hurricane Irma just did in our area, widespread power outages are a given. The time it takes to get people back up varies from a few hours to a couple of weeks or more in some areas. Everyone wants to know when they’ll get power back, but how power is restored after a storm is very intentional.

Quick Article Summary

Assessment

Power stations and facilities

Critical installations

Customer restoration (prioritized by efficiency and need)

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How Power is Restored After a Storm

Step 1: Assessment

Start any project without good planning, and you’ll run into issues. Start a major power restoration project without a plan, and you’ll wind up with a very inefficient and even more costly process.

The first people you’ll see from the utility company will be assessing damage and reporting back to the planning team. This allows on-site crews to have an idea of what’s down and how to best prioritize repairs. When Hurricane Irma hit us in 2017, we saw many such crews driving out and assessing the damage in various areas to establish a “plan of attack”.

Step 2: Power Stations and Facilities

Restoration starts by making repairs to power plants and substations first. If the source of your power isn’t up, it’s awfully tough to know what isn’t working. Once those repairs are complete, facilities like water and wastewater plants will be the next priority with transmission line repairs. As the municipality makes these repairs, they systematically protect “downstream” power substations. This keeps them from accidentally getting unexpected power and causing additional damage.

Step 3: Critical Installations

The next priority includes critical areas like hospitals, life support centers, fire stations, and police stations. These facilities typically sit close to major lines by design. This is, of course, where the crew would start anyway. The goal, however, is to get water and wastewater services to these facilities so they can perform critical functions. Critical installations such as hospitals see main line repairs off of the transmission lines first.

Step 4: Customer Restoration

Contrary to popular belief, wealthy areas do not get back up the quickest. It’s all about moving from the major power arteries to minor capillaries. Much of this works in a similar way to how blood flows in our bodies. The closer you are to transmission lines, the more quickly you’re likely to see power restoration.

There are, however, exceptions to this rule. At this point, the power companies prioritize restoring power to the greatest number of people possible—as quickly as possible. In the case of restoring power after Hurricane Irma, my block didn’t get power back as quickly as the surrounding ones. The reason was that there were repairs to make that got more people back online than my little pocket. While frustrating for those of us without power, 48 hours after the storm saw electricity restored to 65% of residents. By 72 hours that number climbed to nearly 85%.

Only at this point do the small pocket and isolated areas get the repairs they need. In some cases, these include repairs to a single home connection, reducing the number of customers getting back online to very small figures. Our director of sales found his home at the very tail end of a run. His power took nearly two weeks to get repaired—making him one of the last people to regain service in Lakeland.

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The Bottom Line

There is a method to the seeming madness of how power is restored after a storm. While tons of conspiracy theories abound about “the wealthy” getting power back first, this simply isn’t true. The reality—we’ve seen first hand—shows that power companies and municipalities typically have a plan in place. This governs how they restore the grid to get the most customers back up the quickest after critical installations.

There’s one thing to remember—and this has been an issue of misinformation after Hurricane Irma. Linemen are out there to restore power, not talk to you about estimates on repair times! Every minute they’re not working on the line is another minute of delay in getting power back up for some other family. They’re not trying to be rude, they’re trying to do their jobs…often working 16-hour days to get you back up.

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About The Author

An avid endurance athlete, Kenny has competed in triathlons (he's an Ironman) and various other fitness activities. Still, his passions lie with his faith, family, friends, and his love for well-designed power tools. With a background in science, you'll often find Kenny chatting up engineers at media events to get caught up on the latest tool technology.